The larger, highly adaptable animals “have the wolf characteristics of pack hunting and aggression and the coyote characteristics of lack of fear of human-developed areas,” says Trent University geneticist Bradley White, who’s been studying the hybrids for 12 years.

We’re seeing “evolution in action,” he says.

But that combination of genetic material from both species has spelled trouble for farmers, who are losing a growing number of livestock to predators.

They report attacks by animals that are bigger, bolder and smarter than regular coyotes. They say hunting in packs to prey on sheep and cattle in broad daylight is becoming a common behaviour.

Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder

Eating disorder charities are reporting a rise in the number of people suffering from a serious psychological condition characterised by an obsession with healthy eating.

The condition, orthorexia nervosa, affects equal numbers of men and women, but sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated.

Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.

The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished. Their dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their "virtuous" behaviour even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated.

The US’s cash-for-clunkers scheme, designed to bolster Detroit’s embattled carmakers, is turning out to be an even bigger boon for their Japanese rivals.

According to data published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday, Americans are using the scrappage incentives to buy more vehicles from Toyota than any of the three Detroit carmakers.

Toyota has an 18.9 per cent share of vehicles bought so far, putting it ahead of General Motors with 17.6 per cent and Ford with 15.4 per cent. Chrysler is in fifth place, after Honda.

The United States is the only nation other than the Guyanas, Nepal, and Myanmar without a paid-vacation law. Thirty percent of Americans don’t get paid vacation; half of us get one week or less.

Last week Worldchanging ally John de Graaf and Take Back Your Time hosted the first national Vacation Matters Summit in Seattle to discuss the organization’s efforts to get a federal paid-vacation law on the books. De Graaf and others helped draft the bill that Florida Congressman Alan Grayson introduced on May 21. The Paid Vacation Act, or H.R. 2564 is, in de Graaf’s words, a “modest” bill: it would require companies with 100 or more employees to grant all employees one week of paid vacation per year. Three years after the bill’s passage companies with 50 or more employees would have to offer one week, and companies with 100 or more employees, two weeks. The bill needs both grassroots support and congressional allies. (Check out de Graaf’s excellent rebuttal (PDF) to the already vocal opposition.)

Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed maker, plans to charge as much as 42 percent more for new genetically modified seeds next year than older offerings because they increase farmers’ output.

Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans will cost farmers an average of $74 an acre in 2010, and original Roundup Ready soybeans will cost $52 an acre, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in presentations on its Web site. SmartStax corn seeds, developed with Dow Chemical Co., will cost $130 an acre, 17 percent more than the YieldGard triple-stack seeds they will replace.

Internet blogger Harold “Hal” Turner’s attorney said today that Turner’s background as an FBI informant will be a key part of his defense to charges that he incited violence against two state legislators and a state ethics official.

Superior Court Judge David P. Gold on Tuesday authorized Michael A. Orozco, a New Jersey attorney, to represent Turner. Turner did not appear again in court Tuesday because he remains in federal custody without bail in Chicago, where he is accused of threatening three federal judges.

In asking Gold to allow Orozco to represent Turner, Turner’s Connecticut lawyer, Matthew R. Potter, said Orozco has a long-term legal relationship with Turner, plans to bring a complicated First Amendment defense and is familiar with Turner’s background as an FBI informant.

That role as an informant for the FBI is a key part of the defense, Orozco said outside court.

Orozco said Turner was trained by the FBI as “an agent provocateur.”

“Mr. Turner was trained by the FBI,” Orozco said. “He was told where the line was — what he could say.”

In his comments on his blog that brought the state and federal charges, Turner did not cross that line, Orozco said.

Orozco said Turner worked for the FBI from roughly 2002 to 2007.

“His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner that would cause their arrest,” Orozco said.

This is actually a very good read on Tim Leary. It's not pro or con, but provides a good story and some interesting things. I feel it's pretty honest IMO.

Quote:

W.H. Bowart - July 11, 2009

The Associated Press reported that ’60’s LSD proselyte, Timothy Leary died in his sleep, May 31, 1996. It reported that Carol Rosin, his friend for 25 years was by his side along with family and friends.

Rosin told the AP: “He had been alert for the last few days — he’d been traveling with one foot in this world and one foot in the other world. Until yesterday, he was moving around in an electric wheelchair, but he was getting weaker.

After his passing, Leary’s homepage on the World Wide Web said simply: “Timothy has passed.” It also said his last words were three “why not’s” and one “yeah.” Leary himself, had reported that he was taking morphine to ease the pain for months. It is well know that Leary had always been into drugs — any drugs, all drugs, both prescription and recreational.

As part of the upcoming Aqua Metropolis festival in Osaka, engineering firm NTT Facilities has developed a pair of solar-powered, UFO-shaped floating water purifiers that will be deployed in the city’s canals and in the moat at Osaka Castle.

http://www.splcenter.org
Posted by JacobSloan 2 days ago View profile
In an article written for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Larry Keller describes the current rise in domestic militia activity:

In Pensacola, Fla., retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment "Patriots" that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta. They're there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. "They're going to keep track of all of us, folks," Gunderson warns.

Almost 10 years after it seemed to disappear from American life, there are unmistakable signs of a revival of what in the 1990s was commonly called the militia movement. From Idaho to New Jersey and Michigan to Florida, men in khaki and camouflage are back in the woods, gathering to practice the paramilitary skills they believe will be needed to fend off the socialistic troops of the "New World Order."

Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle
Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won't sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?
—By Anna Lenzer

It's not often that bacteria make water more drinkable, but a new microbial desalination cell does precisely that. The proof-of-principle system removed 90 per cent of the salt from a seawater-like solution.

"We just wanted to show that it was possible," says Bruce Logan, an electrical engineer at Pennsylvania State University in University Park who helped make the prototype. "We hope that there will be more research going into this and it could lead to a commercial technology," he adds.

Microbial desalination could offer big advantages over the methods currently used to purify seawater, which require enormous pressure to operate, and gobble up huge amounts of energy.

LIKE moths about a flame, thousands of tiny satellite galaxies flutter about our Milky Way. For astronomers this is a dream scenario, fitting perfectly with the established models of how our galaxy's cosmic neighbourhood should be. Unfortunately, it's a dream in more ways than one and the reality could hardly be more different.

As far as we can tell, barely 25 straggly satellites loiter forlornly around the outskirts of the Milky Way. "We see only about 1 per cent of the predicted number of satellite galaxies," says Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn in Germany. "It is the cleanest case in which we can see there is something badly wrong with our standard picture of the origin of galaxies."

It isn't just the apparent dearth of galaxies that is causing consternation. At a conference earlier this year in the German town of Bad Honnef, Kroupa and his colleagues presented an analysis of the location and motion of the known satellite galaxies. They reported that most of those galaxies orbit the Milky Way in an unexpected manner and that, taken together, their results are at odds with mainstream cosmology. There is "only one way" to explain the results, says Kroupa: "Gravity has to be stronger than predicted by Newton."